Simple Things Won't Save the Earth: By J. Robert Hunter

by Hunter, J. Robert

• ISBN13: 9780292731134
• ISBN10: 0292731132
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr

Summary

We drive cars with "Save the Whales" bumper stickers, buy aerosol sprays that advertise "no chlorofluorocarbons," and wear T-shirts made from organically grown cotton. All of these "earth friendly" choices and products convince us that we are "thinking globally, acting locally" and saving the planet. But are we really? In this provocative book, J. Robert Hunter asserts that using catchy slogans and symbols to sell the public on environmental conservation is ineffective, misleading, and even dangerous. Debunking the Fifty Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth approach, Hunter shows that there are no simple solutions to major environmental problems such as species extinction, ozone depletion, global warming, pollution, and non-renewable resource consumption. The use of slogans and symbols, Hunter argues, simply gives the public a false sense that "someone" is solving the environmental crisis--while it remains as serious now as when the environmental movement began. Writing in plain yet passionate prose for general readers, he here opens a national debate on what is really required to preserve the earth as a habitat for the human species.

Table of Contents

Preface
A Symbol of Our Environmental Dilemma	p. 1
The Para Rubber Tree	p. 6
Natural to Synthetic	p. 18
Dream the Impossible Dream?	p. 28
Disappearing Jungles - and Forests	p. 38
Jungle Myths and Tall Timber Tales	p. 49
Everybody Plant a Tree	p. 64
The Role of Diversity	p. 76
Impossible Dream into Inevitable Nightmare	p. 85
What to Do with a Used Tire	p. 95
Are We Capable of Doing the Right Thing?	p. 103
High-Tech to the Rescue?	p. 113
Roll Out the Barrel	p. 125
The Para Rubber Tree and Global Ecology	p. 138
"Man's Inhumanity to Man"	p. 149
Epilogue	p. 154
Notes	p. 165
Index	p. 191
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